Some embodiments described herein make use of a mobile station. A mobile station is a two-way communication device with advanced data communication capabilities having the capability to communicate with other computer systems, and is also referred to herein generally as a mobile device. A mobile device may also include the capability for voice communications. Depending on the functionality provided by a mobile device, it may be referred to as a data messaging device, a two-way pager, a cellular telephone with data messaging capabilities, a PDA, a Smartphone, a wireless Internet appliance, or a data communication device (with or without telephony capabilities). A mobile device communicates with other devices through a network of transceiver stations.
Most applications for use with such mobile devices have been designed to be stand-alone applications (that generally do not interact with other applications), with a centralized email server providing email, a telephony system providing voice services, an instant messenger service allowing short, informal chats, etc. However, it has been recognised that these services or tools may be enhanced and may improve efficiency if greater interaction between such services was facilitated.
Consider a situation in which clicking on an email while at home automatically initiated a call from the user's enterprise PBX (Private Branch Exchange) to the email sender, or launched an IM (Instant Messaging) session from a problem tracking system to allow informal communications between a support engineer and the customer. This inter-working has become known as “unified communications”.
One way to implement a unified communications system within an enterprise may be through the introduction of proprietary protocols. “Glue” applications may be written to tie together the administration API (Application Programming Interface) published by one company with an equivalent API from another. However, such solutions require substantial effort to introduce inter-operability with services.